A Couple of Misconceived Notions : The Greatest Illusion May Be a Perception That, of the Partners, Mr. McCloskey Was the Better Painter

A still life of tissue-paper-wrapped oranges by William McCloskey fetched $341,000 at an auction two years ago, and other works by the turn-of-the-century painter also have fetched six figures. Paintings by McCloskey’s wife, Alberta, for the most part have never made it to auction.

No biggie, except that, according to Nancy Dustin Wall Moure, guest curator of “Partners in Illusion: William and Alberta Binford McCloskey,” Alberta was the better painter. The exhibition opens todayat the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana.

“Alberta could handle the illusionism of a cloisonne vase, and tremendously intricate flowers,” Moure said. “William to my knowledge couldn’t handle that. Or at least didn’t.

“When William did a still life, it was something simple and round, like a lemon or an orange or an apple,” Moure said. “He would paint a see-through glass bowl or tissue paper, but his edges were soft. Compared to her stuff, his was a semi-out-of-focus situation.”

His edges were indeed soft: After the couple’s breakup in 1898, William had a breakdown and spent several years recuperating before resuming his career alone. The emphasis at the Bowers exhibition (which runs concurrently with “Easels in the Arroyos: Plein Air Paintings from the Permanent Collection”) is on still lifes and genre paintings the McCloskeys did while married.

Bowers has a huge collection of California paintings that generally are not shown because the institution has changed its focus to the art of indigenous peoples. Feeling that many of these paintings nevertheless deserve to be seen, the museum contacted Moure.

It was only by sifting through turn-of-the-century newspapers that Moure was able to glean any significant information about the McCloskeys.

“Until now nothing has been known about them,” Moure said. “And I mean nothing. People have reproduced an isolated picture, but were unable to say anything about the couple. Using the articles that I found, I was able to reconstruct a biography.”

The McCloskeys lived mostly in California and New York, but also traveled a great deal. Alberta died in 1911 in Jamaica, where she’d gone for health reasons. William spent his last 15 years with his daughter and her husband at a campground they owned in Oregon, but died in 1941, not long after moving to Orange County.

Bowers’ collection is based on the painters’ own “demo” pieces. The McCloskeys earned their primary income from portraits they painted jointly, but those were commissioned works, and the museum owns no examples. The show does include a handful of portraits painted by William alone in Los Angeles after 1915.

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Judging from the portraits Moure has seen, she said: “It was probably Alberta who was able to infuse the spirit, the life behind the face, in the portraits that the two did together. The portraits William did later are kind of tepid. They don’t have that bright liveliness.”

Moure selected William’s best work, however, and based upon what’s being shown at Bowers, her assessments seem more a case of comparing oranges and tangerines: Alberta’s superior technical prowess is clearly displayed in her “Oranges in Tissue with Vase,” for instance, which is exhibited opposite a William untitled still life with tangerines.

Whether that makes Alberta the superior artist is the kind of question Moure hopes will now be explored more seriously than in the past.

“In the (old) newspaper reviews, you have this ‘bright little woman with marvelous still lifes,’ yet William would always get the main attention,” Moure said. “Now art history is taking another swing, especially with women artists of the West. But frankly, since the discovery of paper-wrapped oranges in art books of the 1970s, everything advertised has been for William. No dealer has recognized that . . . Alberta even painted. And they won’t until this show.”

Beside the Bowers’ 40 McCloskey paintings, as few as 20 others may to exist; half of those 20 are the paper-wrapped oranges for which the McCloskeys are best known, and which have commanded the highest prices.

“Those prices are irrational given the rest of the still lifes (on the market),” Moure noted. “Part of it is due to the mystique--that nothing is known about the couple--part is due to the paintings’ rarity.

“This show is not going to get national coverage,” she continued, “but I’ve written an article on the McCloskeys, and when that appears, some of that mystique is going to drop away. People are also going to realize Alberta is better. What I think you’ll see, however, is a drop in William’s prices, rather than an increase in Alberta’s. That’s my guess.”

* “Partners in Illusion: William and Alberta Binford McCloskey” runs through Jan. 1 at Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2002 N. Main St., Santa Ana. Also, “Easels in the Arroyos: Plein Air Paintings from the Permanent Collection.” Open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Thursday until 9 p.m. Museum admission: $4.50. (714) 567-3600.